TITLE: Pushmo
PLATFORM: 3DS eShop
DEVELOPER: Intelligent Systems
PUBLISHER: Nintendo
ESRB: E
RELEASED: December 8, 2011

By Justin Polak
Co-founder, Ambassador to the Mushroom Kingdom

Just when I think there will be no original smash hit for the 3DS shop, Pushmo appears out of nowhere and proves me wrong. I’m not usually the type of gamer that goes for puzzle games, either! I think of myself as an above average gamer in terms of skills, but something about most games in the genre creates some sort of mental block, and I play as if I recently just started to get into video games.

I suppose the relaxing nature of Pushmo helps ease my nerves. One of my gripes about most puzzle games is non existent here — a sense of urgency. There is no timer, and you aren’t judged on how fast you solve a puzzle. What is it that you are required to accomplish? You control a character that moves series of blocks back and forth up to three levels of planes.  Sometimes these blocks are just as big as your character, and sometimes they are an enormous wall-like structure, along with everything in between. This style of gameplay obviously plays well into having the 3D turned on, but it’s just as easy to find spacial relations with the feature turned off.

As expected of a game developed with close ties to Nintendo, the learning curve is perfect. As you play Pushmo the game eases you into gradually more difficult puzzles and slowly introduces new concepts and tricks to solve levels. Some of said levels are a random series of blocks while others are murals resembling old school sprites. I also found it convenient that if you get stuck you can either reset all blocks to their starting positions. Even if you make a minor flub or miss a jump you can always rewind time! It’s as if the developers put careful thought into crafting this title.

Though you have to play the main game to unlock all the components, you can also build your own Pushmo level and share it online! Obviously, that means that you can try your hand at other user created levels! Once you create a level, the game will have you crate a QR code that you can save on to the SD card. Copy the file on to your computer, post it online and the rest is history. Bear in mind that your levels have to be solvable in order to get a QR code in the first place. That’s actually a relief for me, because I can see tons of users creating unsolvable troll face after unsolvable troll face if they let you release levels that were impossible. In fact, try my level that I quickly threw together in a last minute panic!

Yeah, so I’m no level designer, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t all sorts of cool ideas out there from classic game references to brain teasing walls of hell. Though, no matter whether the level was user created or in the main game, the best puzzles are the ones that appear deceptively simple, but actually make you think. When you finally solve it, you smack your forehead and yell, “Of course!” As far as the main game goes, if you get stuck on a level for a decent amount of time, you can always skip it and come back and try later. To paraphrase what I said earlier, the developers really went out of their way to be as user friendly as possible.

Pushmo is a game you are practically obligated to download to your 3DS. If Nintendo gets a few more title like this one, their slow but sure momentum will finally hit full speed.

RATING: 9.5/10

Front page from nintendolife.com, header image from vgtribune.com, screenshots from joystiq.com, Pushmo level “I rushed this” courtesy of Justin.